Subject: bug#79378: pointless gnulib-tool options

From: "Brian C. Lane" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2025 09:07:54 -0700

On Wed, Sep 03, 2025 at 05:11:57PM +0200, Bruno Haible via Bug reports for the GNU Parted disk partition editor wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> In the https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/parted.git repository,
> in bootstrap.conf there are the lines
> 
> gnulib_tool_option_extras="--tests-base=gnulib-tests --with-tests --symlink\
>  --makefile-name=gnulib.mk
> "
> mkdir -p gnulib-tests
> 
> But since
>   1) the directory gnulib-tests/ does not have a Makefile.am,
>   2) the top-level Makefile.am does not include 'gnulib-tests' among the
>      SUBDIRS,
> this generation of gnulib-tests is pointless. You could drop it:
> 
> gnulib_tool_option_extras="--symlink\
>  --makefile-name=gnulib.mk
> "

This was added in commit ea9cb0048bd633ff2043a3af2265d2544da345e7
because not having it there was causing bootstrap failures. gnulib is a
twisty path of ancient code, so maybe it's there for a reason. I'll try
to take a closer look at it when I prepare the next release.

Brian

-- 
Brian C. Lane (PST8PDT) - weldr.io - lorax - parted - pykickstart